The Musicals of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer

Category: Dangerous When Wet

  • Eugene Borden

    Parisian Élysée Eugène Prieur-Bardin (1897-1971) emigrated to America as a teenager, but played many Frenchmen (and sundry other continentals) in a fifty-year career. He started out in The Great Secret (1917), a serial with jeopardy and super-villains, and concluded with one of James Coburn’s sixties’ Flint adventures.

    His contributions to MGM musicals, all uncredited, spanned 27 years. They were in Chasing Rainbows, The Cat and the Fiddle, The Merry Widow, The Firefly, Thrill of a Romance, Yolanda and the Thief, On the Town, An American in Paris, Million Dollar Mermaid, Dangerous When Wet, Interrupted Melody, It’s Always Fair Weather and Silk Stockings.

  • Irving G Ries

    Irving Guy Ries (1890-1963) was a successful silent cinematographer from a young age, who worked onThe Hollywood Revue of 1929 and then helped to establish MGM’s optical effects department.

    It was here that he made his major contribution to some of MGM’s best musicals. Ries provided special effects on Anchors Aweigh (Gene Kelly dancing with Jerry), The Barkeleys of Broadway (dancing shoes), An American in Paris, The Belle of New York (Fred Astaire walking in the sky), Singin’ in the Rain, Dangerous When Wet, Give a Girl a Break, It’s Always Fair Weather and Invitation to the Dance. 

    None of which is as interesting as the fact that, when he travelled to Germany in 1915, his passport was copied by the authorities and later used by German spy Paul Hensel. When Hensel was executed by firing squad in the UK later that year, it was under the name Irving G Ries.

  • Charlotte Greenwood

    Frances Charlotte Greenwood (1890-1977) had aspirations to be a serious actor, but found that her destiny was to make people laugh. This was, in part, owing to her very long legs and the things she could do with them while dancing; as she said herself, “I’m the only woman alive who can kick a giraffe in the eye”.

    Greenwood appeared in many film musicals, though only three at MGM. In 1931 she was Pansy Potts, Bert Lahr’s love interest, in Flying High. There followed a gap of 22 years until Dangerous When Wet, and then, just three years later, The Opposite Sex.

    Charlotte Greenwood also notched up one entry as a Metro songwriter when she and her husband Martin Broones contributed ‘Campus Capers’ to So This Is College.

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